LowCel 

12/1/04 - 220 pounds, 24% body fat
3/29/05 - 181 pounds, 17% body fat
29 years old, male, 5' 10"

I consider it to be a success. It definately has not been easy. I have been watching what I eat and going to the gym for 2 - 3 hours a day four or five times a week. I am almost at my goal weight wise, I wanted to be 180 pounds by this coming Sunday (4/3) since that is my first race of the year. My main goal is to get down to 175 pounds though. Once that happens I want to start really concentrating on getting my body fat percentage down. I am hoping to eventually get it down to 12% - 13%.

I have recently changed my workout quite a bit. For the first three months I was concentrating primarily just on cardio work. I was spending 28 minutes on the stationary bike, 28 minutes on the stairmaster and 28 minutes on the treadmill five days a week. Once I got my weight down to around 187 I started concentrating primarily on weights. I do upper body 2 - 3 times a week. Once I fininsh the workout I do 40 minutes of cardio on a cross trainer. On the other days I either do an hour or so of cardio or get out on the bike, which is my exercise of choice.

I believe that the biggest mistake I have made is by not getting enough protein. I didn't realize it but you are supposed to have 1 gram of protein for each pound of lean body mass. I had been getting less than 50 grams of protein a day which meant that a good part of my weight loss has been muscle. I have recently started drinking 2-3 protein shakes a day, this makes sure that I get my 150 grams of protein a day.